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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26446879">Aviculture</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickmanifyouloveme/pseuds/quickmanifyouloveme'>quickmanifyouloveme</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ornithology [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alfred is Trying, Consensual Underage Sex, Crying During Sex, Daddy Kink, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Father/Son Incest, Fluff with a heavy dose of childhood sexual abuse, Incest Kink, M/M, POV Bruce Wayne, Parent/Child Incest, Possessive Behavior, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Dick Grayson, Vaginal Sex</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:55:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,584</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26446879</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickmanifyouloveme/pseuds/quickmanifyouloveme</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"The captive breeding and keeping of birds."</p><p>Dick's been crying a lot. Alfred confronts Bruce about Dick's increasing social isolation as he encroaches upon his eighteenth birthday. Bruce asks Dick an important question.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alfred Pennyworth &amp; Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Ornithology [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922497</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>180</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Aviculture</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set 9 months into Bruce and Dick's sexual relationship. Dick is still 17. This is a followup to the flashback in Fledgling; you don't need to have read that to understand this, but it gives a lot of insight into Dick's mind. Meanwhile, Bruce has some gross thoughts! Enjoy them.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dick had been crying a lot. Bruce didn’t know what to think or do about it. This was often the case when it came to Dick: should he touch him? How? A pat on the shoulder? A warm hand on his nape? An arm around his waist?</p><p>Never the last, not before. Not unless his Robin were falling out of the sky and needed Batman to swoop down and catch him. Or unless, through his own carelessness, he’d let some creep with a blade swipe through his son’s intestines and Bruce needed to tuck his arm under Dick’s shoulder and help him stagger toward the Batmobile. Toward Alfred, who was safe. Bruce would hand him off and disappear farther into the Cave. His need to deprive himself of watching Dick’s bare chest, broadening by the week, rise and fall and rise and fall—that need was greater than Dick’s own for Bruce’s support. A hand to squeeze during the pain. An older adult to say <em>Everything will be alright </em>and <em>The pain will fade before you know it</em>.</p><p>Now it was after before. It was a present that Bruce had woven together himself, from the silk of the soiled bedsheets from that first night. He’d folded them into sharp corners and hidden them in the back of his armoire, so he wouldn’t have to wash them himself or, as Dick had suggested, burn them. He wanted to keep them. He would catch himself retrieving them in the thin hours of the night, after he’d sent Dick back to his own room following hours of soft kisses and grasping fists. He’d lift the sheets to his cheek and breathe in the sour scent of their sweat and Dick’s come. He would shiver like someone had run a knife up his spine, closer and closer to his throat.</p><p>Dick had been crying a lot, so Bruce’s pillowcases often smelled like salt.</p><p>Just last night: curled on their sides, Bruce’s chest stuck to Dick’s back; Bruce breathless from exertion, cock rooted deep in his son’s cunt, his own come spilling around the shaft; his index and middle finger stroked Dick’s clit, thrust it between them like Dick had a cock and was fucking someone’s thighs; he listened to Dick whimper and heave, to his pulse throbbing behind his ear; kissed that pulse and whispered, <em>There we go. Daddy’s got you. Let go, sweet boy</em>; loosed his own moan as Dick bucked and tightened and came crying both of Bruce’s names—and then started really crying.</p><p>Bruce hadn’t pulled out. He’d wrapped a shuddering arm around his little boy’s chest and held him as close as he could. Dick had gasped; whether from the force of his sobs or Bruce crushing the air from his diaphragm, he couldn’t tell.</p><p><em>Pretty little boy, </em>he’d cooed. He’d never cooed at anyone before after. Not even when Dick was smaller than little and had climbed into his new father’s bed after a nightmare. Crying then, too. But this now that Bruce had created, Dick a stone’s throw away from eighteen, Bruce had learned how to coo:</p><p>
  <em>I’m so proud of you. You took me so beautifully. You can let it out. </em>
</p><p>And through wet gasps Dick said, <em>I love you, Daddy—love you so much—I’m sorry I’m like this—I love you—</em></p><p>As if trying to convince Bruce of something that had been obvious from the start.</p><p>Sometimes, he wished Alfred were elsewhere. And felt guilty about wishing so. Alfred loved Bruce, too—he’d stumbled into the hearts of two of the best people he’d ever met—and would be hurt if Bruce suggested a long vacation to his motherland, or even asked Alfred to stop opening his curtains and bringing him breakfast every morning.</p><p>But Dick, his baby boy, was crying and <em>needed </em>Bruce the way that he needed him back, and Bruce hated to send him away night after night. More than once, Bruce had lain in his cooling bed and imagined watching sunlight spill across the floor while Dick still warmed the space next to him.</p><p>Alfred didn’t know. Couldn’t know. Bruce didn’t know what Alfred would do, but he knew he was too weak to stand it. Maybe after Dick turned eighteen, Bruce could let little things slip, and then big things, and then Alfred would—would know only half of what the man he’d raised had done to his own son. The better half.</p><p>Already a concession, the start of the Manor shifting to accommodate this new now: Bruce had silently moved the portrait of his mother and father from his bedroom to his study. The framed picture of Dick as a toothy-grinning ten-year-old stayed on his dresser.</p><p>Now. Batman and Robin stood in the hangar bay, suits grimy with midnight smog. Robin was smiling.</p><p>“That’s what I’m talking about!” he exclaimed. He hopped on one foot and twisted into a roundhouse kick. “B, did you see how many guys I got with one batarang? It was like pop-pop-pop!”</p><p>Batman smiled and ruffled Robin’s sweaty hair. Robin grinned up at him and hammered excited fists on Batman’s chest plate.</p><p>“And, <em>and</em>, I defused the bomb by myself, and you didn’t see, but I did it perfectly! First try!” He began hopping again, bouncing in his little leather boots that were too polished to creak. “That was <em>awesome</em>. That’s why I still do this!”</p><p>Batman removed his cowl and Bruce raised an eyebrow at Robin. “To defuse bombs?”</p><p>“To save people <em>by </em>defusing bombs! Gosh, B.” It was… jarring to hear Robin stick to his usual child-appropriate language and remember how often Dick hissed curses into Bruce’s ear or shoulder or pillow.</p><p>Bruce patted Robin on the shoulder and turned away. “Get dressed; Alfred has cookies.” Dick punched the air like a shadow boxer and ran for the showers.</p><p>Precisely on time, Alfred stepped out of the elevator with a barking hot tray. He nodded at Bruce, walked to the computer bay, and laid the tray on a rubber mat on the edge of the desk.</p><p>“I trust you both emerged from the fray unscathed.” Alfred faced him and smiled with only the creases of his eyes.</p><p>“This time, yes.” Alfred made a show of studying him keenly, and Bruce lifted his arms and brushed back the cape. “I’m not hiding anything, I promise.”</p><p>“Very well. I believe you. <em>This time</em>,” Alfred echoed with an undercurrent of humor. Still, something of his steel spine showed in his posture: minutely uplifted chin, excruciatingly straight shoulders, tense thighs and calves. Bruce almost frowned. Why would Alfred poise himself to run?</p><p>Alfred spoke again: “You’ve returned later than usual. Master Dick must wake up for school in only a few hours.”</p><p>Bruce winced. Alfred didn’t know how right he was to be concerned; most nights, Bruce couldn’t bear to send Dick to his own room until five in the morning. “He’s been out this late before. He can handle it.”</p><p>Alfred raised an eyebrow, the motion much sharper and more finely honed than Bruce’s own. “Indeed. Should he have to?”</p><p>“If he wants to. He’s old enough to decide for himself.”</p><p>Alfred cocked his head. His hands remained folded behind his back, forever at parade rest. “That he is. However, there are times when one must intervene in a teenager’s sleeping habits. Master Dick has been falling asleep in class.”</p><p>The smallest fist punched the faintest gasp from Bruce’s chest. It surprised him. It shouldn’t have. “He told you?”</p><p>“One of his teachers phoned the civilian line, a Ms. Stell.” Alfred leveled a look at him. During Bruce’s investigations into every current instructor and substitute at Gotham Academy, he’d found absolutely nothing untoward about Ms. Stell. She was trustworthy. She’d always cared for her students. “His marks are suffering. She reported that he failed a test in her class for the first time, because he had fallen asleep in the midst of it.”</p><p>Bruce turned his eyes to Dick’s cluttered side of the computer desk. He peeled off his gauntlets and rubbed a hand on his chin.</p><p>Alfred continued, “She’d tried to wake him, but he was sleeping too deeply. He didn’t rouse until the bell rang.”</p><p>Nothing inspired guilt like a mild dressing down from Alfred. Bruce allowed his shoulders to slump. “I didn’t know. I’ll talk to him about it.” But what do to? Shorten patrol? Send Dick away earlier? Make love to his son only on nights off from patrol? Despite Dick’s commitment to their partnership, Bruce was possessive of their time together. It felt precious and diminishing, like a crumbling diamond.</p><p>“Ms. Stell impressed upon me, and requested that I impress upon you, the significance of his marks this year. He soon will be applying to universities.” Bruce’s eyes flicked up and met Alfred’s. He and Alfred hadn’t argued about this yet. Dick hadn’t breathed a word about college, now that it was after.</p><p>“I know. If she calls again, tell her that I’m grateful for her concern.”</p><p>“Of course, Master Bruce.” Alfred wasn’t done. Bruce could sense words hiding under Alfred’s tongue, tucked away like little seeds. To be spat out when necessary. “He <em>will</em> be attending university, yes?”</p><p>Bruce said nothing. Alfred stepped closer. “You are fully capable of ensuring his attendance to any institution, but I believe we’d all rather he earn a place on his own merits. Also are you capable of arranging any manner of alternative study, so that Master Dick may remain at home and continue as Robin—” Bruce had considered that. When he’d been able to consider Dick leaving for college at all, the furnace of his fear heating the thought until it seared to touch. “—but it is my opinion that a boy his age should spend a great deal of his early adulthood away from his parents’ influence.”</p><p>Bruce sighed and dragged a palm over his face. “Alfred, he’s not a normal boy. He won’t have a normal adulthood.”</p><p>“You should ask him whether he wants one. He is old enough to decide for himself, after all.” Bruce nodded and peered at the man who was almost his father. Alfred’s posture hadn’t changed at all. He had much left to say. Bruce unclasped Batman’s cape from his shoulders and draped it over a desk chair. It would become a burden soon. Not quite the weight of the Earth, but close.  </p><p>“If he does decide to leave,” Alfred must have known how badly that thought burned him, how his mind stung with blisters, “then he may leave his friends behind, as well. He ought to spend more time with them before the school year ends.”</p><p>Bruce frowned and began flexing his fingers. “I thought he spent time with his friends after school? And on the weekends?”</p><p>“He does,” Alfred conceded. “But, as I’m sure you have not failed to notice, he has been inviting them to the Manor less often. I rarely have more than one teenage boy to cook for,” Alfred joked with a thin smile. “He spends most of his evenings here, with you.” That wasn’t an accusation. It felt like one. “Then, he spends his nights with you. In fact, when I asked whether I should prepare a suit and a car for his senior prom, he told me he wouldn’t be going.”</p><p>This, Bruce did know. He had asked Dick about it, whispering in his ear between hot kisses to his son’s freckle-flushed cheek: <em>Will you go? Have people asked you? How many? Did you tell them no? </em></p><p><em>No, Daddy, I w-won’t. </em>His little boy’s chest rattling with lust and pleasure. <em>Some people. Yeah, told ‘em no, ah, ah, of course I did. </em></p><p>His cock twitched in his cup. He swallowed. “He went last year; maybe he’s not interested anymore.”</p><p>“Hm. Perhaps.” Alfred wasn’t satisfied with that answer; Bruce couldn’t fabricate another one. “Perhaps he is…” Alfred searched for a word. “Worried. About your reaction, if he reaches for more independence.”</p><p>Bruce rushed to answer, “He knows I would never hurt him.” He <em>wouldn’t</em>.</p><p>“You could take Robin away from him.” Alfred’s expression turned severe, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he fixed his sharpest, shrewdest gaze upon Bruce. “That would hurt him far more than failing a test or declining to see his friends.”</p><p>Bruce stood straighter. He said with all his conviction, “I won’t. He knows that.”</p><p>Alfred was silent. He allowed the silence to swing heavy in the air, like a granite pendulum. Back and forth. Watching with those stoic gray eyes. Waiting with the patience of a man who stood by almost every night with gauze and sewing needle ready. Bruce did not squirm.</p><p>Finally, Alfred’s voice stern and clipped: “You mustn’t give in to selfishness. I doubt there ever will come a time when you are anything less than the most important person in his life. Master Dick deserves a wider sphere of influence than you currently allow him.”</p><p>Bruce shivered with the tremulousness of a man who lingered on the edge of a tall, tall bridge. “He does,” he croaked out. “I will talk to him about that, too. He can… can be as independent as he likes. I would never stop him.”</p><p>Alfred must have known he was lying. He gave no indication of it, instead bowing his head in acknowledgement.</p><p>Ice crawled through Bruce’s core, from his diaphragm to the back of his throat. What could Alfred have left to say? Alfred turned away and began tidying the clutter on Dick’s side of the desk, capping pens and placing them in the pen holder, retrieving his mouse where it had fallen on the chair and placing it next to the keyboard. He didn’t touch any of the papers strewn everywhere, a chaos that only Robin could decipher. They were working on a child trafficking case. Dick had stuck the photos between every few pages like sick bookmarks; he’d said it was to remind him of what he was working for, when he got tired and casework began to slide into monotony.</p><p>Eyes still trained on the desk, Alfred began, “I know you love him.” The corners of Bruce’s mouth twitched, half-smile and half-grimace. “Master Dick is a wonderful boy. He will grow to be a brilliant man.” Bruce hummed in affirmation. Alfred turned to look at him again. “I, too, will be sad to see him go. Leave the nest, if you’ll permit an old man a bad joke.” His father’s expression had softened. With the muscles in his face slack, his lines and wrinkles were especially deep. “What’s more, in two months he will no longer be your ward and your legal relationship will dissolve.”</p><p>Bruce didn’t know what to think about that. His and Dick’s relationship would cease to be illegal. He wouldn’t be—God—raping his son, but having sex with his lover. They had much to gain, as Dick had pointed out before they’d first made love. But they had much to lose, too.</p><p>His claim on Dick’s life. His access to Dick’s information. His ability to gift Dick with anything, <em>anything </em>he wanted without burdening Dick with more taxes than he could handle. And Dick would… He would have no family. No concrete connections to anyone.</p><p>He hated to deprive Dick of something as fundamental as family. To give Dick the family that he deserved, there were two equally impossible options.</p><p>“Master Bruce, have you reconsidered adopting him?”</p><p>He had. He hadn’t. He should. He couldn’t.</p><p>Alfred projected beneficent patience as he watched Bruce so, so carefully. Bruce’s skin wanted to slough off and crawl across the floor and hide somewhere dark and disgusting.</p><p>Bruce cleared his throat. “I…” He grasped for something to say. “We agreed a long time ago that I wouldn’t. I don’t think he’s changed his mind.”</p><p>Alfred tilted his head. “I would ask him again. You are not eager to see him go; I believe he is equally trepidatious to leave. It might help you both let go if you maintained a legal relationship. Then the Manor, and you and I, truly would always be his home.” His words resonated in Bruce’s core like a stone skipping across a lake.</p><p>Bruce choked out, “Do you think we need help letting go?”</p><p>Alfred’s eyebrow raised at such an obvious question. “Sir.” He phrased his next words with aching care. Bruce knew this was what he’d been waiting to say. “If you don’t begin ceding independence now, gradually, then it will be all the more painful when he does leave. I believe you both have suffered enough.” His father, Dick’s grandfather, suddenly looked melancholy. “The risks of vigilantism be as they may, I would loathe to see your relationship cause either of you pain rather than happiness.”</p><p>Dick had been crying a lot.</p><p>Bruce didn’t know what to think or do about it.</p><p>He wanted to hold him close long past dawn. He wanted to empty out Dick’s bedroom and move all his most precious things into Bruce’s: the Flying Graysons poster, Zitka, his mother’s journal with anecdotes about his father written in Rromani and sketches of their baby son. He wanted to see what came after the tears. He wanted to kiss a smile onto Dick’s face. He wanted to be able to say that he loved Dick.</p><p>“I fear,” Alfred said, “that he’ll break your heart, as you did mine when you left.” The guilt that Bruce resented so much slimed in his gut. He stepped closer and laid a hand on Alfred’s shoulder.</p><p>“Alfred, I… I’m sorry.” How foreign those words felt.</p><p>“I have long forgiven you, Master Bruce. I know you did not intend to hurt me, but hurt me, you did.” Nothing, no gushing stab wound or sterling gunshot, had pierced him as deeply as Alfred’s slight frown. “I would not wish that experience upon you. Ask Master Dick about adoption, sir. And tell him his friends are more than welcome to visit.”</p><p>He squeezed Alfred’s shoulder and lied, “I will.”</p><p>Alfred didn’t smile, but he did relax. “I believe you’ll both find yourselves happier in the end.” Bruce let his hand slip off of Alfred’s shoulder as Alfred stepped back. “I’ll go fetch the boy; I’m sure he’s impatient for his cookies by now.”</p><p>Bruce could barely whisper, “Goodnight, Alfred,” as he watched him leave. Eyes blank like cloudy sea glass, wind whistling between his ears, Bruce divested himself of Batman’s suit and retreated to his bedroom.</p><p>-</p><p>Enough time for a brisk shower of his own. Soap bit at his healing wounds, down to the thinnest papercut. He thought of asking Dick to join his family. A different way from what Alfred had imagined, had wanted for the both of them. Black suits. Shiny patent leather shoes that reflected the clouds above. Copper leaves crackling underneath as they stood among the apple trees in the thick of Alfred’s orchard. Two rings. A kiss. Dick would cry and Bruce would know he was happy.</p><p>Dick could leave, then. Go to college with Bruce’s ring on his finger scraping against notebook paper and clicking against his pen as he took notes in class. Everyone would know. Those strangers would see his beautiful boy and know who he belonged to.</p><p>Bruce had been lying on his bed, naked skin stirring up static on his gray sheets, for twenty-six minutes when the door clicked open. It closed. The drapes hanging from his bedposts parted and a sweet weight dipped the mattress.</p><p>“Hey,” Dick whispered. Bruce smiled and raised himself on his elbows. He reached out and brushed Dick’s hair behind his ear, then cupped his nape. His son leaned into the kiss; he tasted like sugar flakes and vanilla.</p><p>Bruce’s cock stirred against his thigh. He lay back against the headboard and felt like humming in contentment when Dick, dressed only in the briefs he wore to sleep, slid on top of him. Dick settled on his lap and smiled up at him.</p><p>He nuzzled Bruce’s neck and smelled his shampoo. “You took a bath without me?”</p><p>“Just a shower.” Bruce couldn’t keep his fingers out of Dick’s hair, twisting and stroking it as he studied his lover: warm olive skin dotted with moles, freckles, and white scars; full lips that were often tacky with chapstick; two blue, blue eyes that Bruce couldn’t stop looking for wherever he went. “I thought you would go to bed. It’s late.”</p><p>“I <em>am </em>in bed.” Dick grinned and arched into Bruce’s touch. Bruce rolled his eyes.</p><p>“Thought you would go to <em>sleep</em>, then. It’s a school night.”</p><p>It was Dick’s turn to roll his eyes. “Okay, Dad.” Bruce bit the inside of his lip and scratched Dick’s scalp. After an uncertain pause: “Do you want me to go?”</p><p><em>Never</em>. “No.”</p><p>“Okay.” Dick kissed across Bruce’s jaw and sucked his earlobe into his mouth. He was as confident as he’d been the first time, when he’d vaulted himself up and forced Bruce to catch him.  </p><p>He was so soft and warm and perfect in his arms, but Bruce had to ask: “How much did you hear?”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“Alfred and I. How much did you hear?”</p><p>Dick was silent save for puffs of breath that tickled Bruce’s ear. “Daddy,” he started in that little voice. He didn’t want to talk. Bruce wasn’t surprised, but he needed to know.</p><p>“Dick.”</p><p>Dick sighed. Bruce could feel him slipping out of little boy space as easily as he’d slipped into it: his muscles no longer lax, his heart rate closer to normal rather than depressed from deep relaxation. “Alfred thinks I should go to prom.”</p><p>Most of it, then. All the important things. Dick pulled away to meet Bruce’s eyes; Bruce let him go but flexed his arms around his boy’s back.</p><p>A scar-dappled hand stroked Dick’s spine. “Do you want to go?”</p><p>“We already talked about this.” Dick shivered as he shook his head. He looked serious. Alert. Beautiful. “I said no.”</p><p>But. “Did you say no because you thought it was what I wanted to hear?”</p><p>Dick snorted and rubbed his thumbs over Bruce’s cheeks. Bruce’s lids fluttered shut. “I know it’s what you want to hear. But I’m an adult.” Almost. “If I wanted to go, I’d go.” Bruce hummed in that ambiguous tone that annoyed Dick so much. “Anything else you want to ask me?”</p><p>“Why did you stop inviting your friends over?” Bruce opened his eyes to watch Dick’s reaction: the barest purse of his lower lip, distractingly wet with Bruce’s own saliva.</p><p>“I didn’t want…” Dick trailed off. He ducked his head and scraped his nails back and forth along Bruce’s collarbone and thought in silence. “The Manor has always felt special, especially the Cave. There’s so much here that’s <em>you</em>, and some of it’s me, and now a lot is ours. You know?” Bruce nodded.</p><p>Dick looked at him again and continued, “I didn’t want to—to mix things up. Cross the streams.” He chuckled at his own joke and lured a smile onto Bruce’s face. “This space is for us, Dick and Bruce, like the Cave is for Batman and Robin. Other people would muddy it up.”</p><p>Bruce tried to be tender when he ventured, “It feels like our secret, you mean.”</p><p>“Bruce.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>Dick’s pout verged on a scowl. It didn’t soften as Bruce tightened his arms around his son’s waist and pulled him even closer, until Bruce’s soft cock was pressed between his own stomach and Dick’s briefs.</p><p>“I would tell if I could.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“But I can’t, so yes, it’s our secret.” Still frowning, Dick kissed Bruce’s chin and then his lips. “I’m not ashamed of you, or of what I want. It sounded like Alfred was pretty close to figuring it out, anyway.”</p><p>Bruce’s breath stuttered and then released in a puff, blowing the curls at the front of Dick’s hair. “Do you think so?”</p><p>“Yeah, I mean.” Dick twined his fingers in Bruce’s chest hair and tugged. Always fiddling and fidgeting, his boy. “All that stuff about independence and hanging out with my friends. People my own age. Going to prom and probably taking a date, so, dating people my own age. Pointing out,” Dick added with a faraway look, “that my life revolves around you.”</p><p>Bruce cupped Dick’s jaw and raised his head until their eyes met, blue to blue. “It shouldn’t,” he swore. “I don’t want it to.”</p><p>Dick graced him with a wry half-smile. Bruce knew that Dick had seen through his lie. “Well, until I can tell people about you and me, it kind of does. This is the most important part of my life and I can’t even talk about it with my friends.”</p><p>He laid an open-mouthed kiss on his boy’s forehead and murmured, “I’m sorry.” Dick gave him a small shrug, but the skin around his eyes tensed. As if he were trying to stop tears before they started.</p><p>“I want to tell Alfred first.” Bruce nodded and kept kissing all over Dick’s face, slowly traveling from brow, to temple, to ear, to jaw. “He deserves it.” He hummed as Bruce nipped at his chin. “I want to stop sneaking around in my own house.” Bruce grunted in agreement and kissed his nose. “And then he’ll stop saying that you should adopt me.”</p><p>Bruce paused. He stroked Dick’s nose with a slow finger and took his time thinking. Dick watched him; some tiny muscle in Dick’s jaw twitched.</p><p>“You can’t fault him for his logic. Or his concern.”</p><p>Dick tilted his head so that Bruce’s finger brushed his lips instead. He waited.</p><p>Bruce said, “He wants you to have a family and a home. Even after you…”</p><p>“This already is my home,” Dick insisted.</p><p>“Yes, but legally and permanently.” Bruce replaced his finger with his own lips, just for a moment. “Forever.”</p><p>It was Bruce’s turn to watch. <em>Forever </em>landed hard on Dick’s ears. Bruce could see something starting to slip—a tiny fissure in a cliff, stone riving from stone.</p><p>Bruce whispered, “Would you like that?”</p><p>Dick’s brow creased. “I don’t want you to adopt me, especially not now.”</p><p>“Okay.” Bruce’s blood sprinted through his heart; the force of it threatened to tear the muscle in two. He slid his arms around Dick again and skated his palms from the boy’s neck to the small of his back. “But do you…” He swallowed. Dick’s brow furrowed further, confusion and wariness writ on his pretty face. “Would you like forever? With me?”</p><p>Pebbles began to rain down the cliffside. “What do you mean?”</p><p>Bruce couldn’t answer. He raised one hand to cup his son’s cheek and lowered the other to slide down Dick’s chest and belly. The dense muscles quivered as he brushed over them. By instinct, his fingers found Dick’s clit and began rubbing him through his briefs.</p><p>Dick’s hips jolted and his pink lips parted. Bruce felt his cock stiffening, on its way to leaking just by watching his little boy’s eyes blacken.</p><p>“Daddy…” he murmured. Bruce’s fingers pushed more firmly, until his clit rose from its hood and he could pinch it. Dick hissed but rocked against him anyway. Bruce could only imagine how the cotton separating their skin felt grinding against his lips.</p><p>“Daddy,” Dick repeated, “what do you mean?” Bruce used the hand on Dick’s cheek to tug him into a kiss, but Dick ducked. He looked up at Bruce through his berry-black eyelashes. “Bruce, come on.”</p><p>Dick’s hips kept moving, heat hazed his eyes, but he wouldn’t look away. Bruce had no choice.</p><p>“Would you like to marry me?”</p><p>Rockslide. Dick’s thighs started trembling; his breath shallowed; his small, strong hands grabbed Bruce’s forearms and held on as tightly as a tourniquet. Bruce’s fingers on his son’s clit sped up without permission, rolling over it and stroking it from base to tip as if he were jerking off a cock.</p><p>“Beautiful boy,” he cooed, as he had nearly every night for the last nine months. He thought of everyone at Dick’s school, all of the Titans, every hero they knew, watching and knowing. Two thousand eyes and as many palms, sweat-slick and hungry. “<em>My </em>boy.”</p><p>Dick’s head nodded like a shaken rag doll. Bruce kissed him gently, as if trying not to crush petals—gently enough to soak in Dick’s whimper when Bruce’s hand crept beneath the hem of his briefs. He had gotten so wet that his clit slipped through Bruce’s fingers once, twice, before Bruce got ahold of it again and ground harder than before.</p><p>“I—Daddy, I—” Dick stuttered in a small voice. Bruce felt his breath brush his face like a caress. “Do you—?”</p><p>“Yes. Yes, I mean it.” Cock throbbing, Bruce pushed Dick’s briefs out of the way and thrust its swollen head against his vulva. Dick gasped and his hips bore down. He tucked his face in the crook of his father’s shoulder, cheeks hot, and whispered, “Please, please,” until Bruce gave in once more. His cock slid through Dick’s folds and into his cunt in one smooth fuck.</p><p>Bruce moaned and relished how tightly his boy clenched down, underprepared but needy for it. He let his nails dig into Dick’s back as he started thrusting, bouncing Dick up and down on his lap like the kid Dick might have been on his father’s knee. In that moment Bruce was spitefully grateful that John Grayson wasn’t alive to see this, to steal from him Dick’s strangled voice rasping out, “Daddy, Daddy.”</p><p>“Pretty whore.” He knew he was leaving marks all over Dick’s back, scores of robin-red that would linger for days, maybe a week. “You’ll do anything for me.” Dick whined and his thighs shook as Bruce pumped harder. Dick’s damp curls started bumping Bruce’s chin, making Bruce’s teeth click. “Won’t you?”</p><p>Dick could barely speak between the grunts that Bruce’s cock punched out of him. “Ah, ah, yes, please, yes.”</p><p>“You’ll marry me?”</p><p>With a hoarse groan, Dick lifted onto his knees and began dropping his full weight onto Bruce’s lap, almost matching Bruce’s force. “Ask me again.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>“A-Ask me,” Dick insisted, so Bruce kissed his crown of curls and said, “Will you marry me?”</p><p>A mountain-high whine. Dick was getting close. “Again. Daddy, ask me again.” Bruce used one hand to scrape Dick’s clit and the other to card through Dick’s hair. He tugged Dick’s head out of the crook of Bruce’s collarbone; tears clumped his eyelashes and dripped down his scorched cheeks. “<em>Please</em>.”</p><p>“Okay, baby boy.” He’d give Dick what he needed. He always would. Watching Dick grind on his daddy’s lap, Bruce murmured, “Marry me.” He said it over and over again, and kissed the pleas out of his son’s mouth, and bounced Dick with the full strength of his thick thighs until the bed frame creaked, and let Dick come with a shout and a sob but without an answer.</p><p>As soon as Dick came, he started weeping. He dug his fingers into the back of Bruce’s neck and clutched him until no space remained between them. Whining and twitching, he let Bruce close his teeth on his fluttering throat and suck. Bruce didn’t slow down. He took what he wanted, snatched Dick’s hips with jealous hands and used his hole like a doll’s. The wet smack of their bodies drowned out Dick’s rib-shattering sobs until Bruce grunted, “My sweet boy, my son,” and spilled inside him.</p><p>They always ended up like this. Bruce buried inside him. Dick holding him close and crying. But, Bruce realized as he shushed him and stroked his hair, he’d never cried this loudly before. Ugly, jolted sobs that echoed off the high, dark ceilings. Harder than a widow at a funeral.</p><p>Bruce softened, but his cock was big enough, or Dick was small enough, that it didn’t slip out. He kept shushing and humming and thinking about his come soaking into Dick’s body. Bruce didn’t want a baby—he doubted he ever would—but maybe he wanted to see Dick full and heavy one day. He nuzzled Dick’s temple and breathed in the tang of grease, sweat, and salt.</p><p>Soon, Dick roused himself from a little boy’s daze. Dick sighed and kissed along Bruce’s carotid arteries and Adam’s apple. “Say it again.”</p><p>“I want you to marry me.” Dick shuddered. Bruce leaned back against the headboard, cradled Dick’s face in his hands, caressed the notches behind Dick’s ears. Tears still crept down his face. “And I want you to stop crying.”</p><p>Dick sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“No, shh, it’s okay.” He kissed Dick’s forehead like a blessing. “I want to understand why. I need to make sure you’re happy.”</p><p>Dick’s quivering hands skated over Bruce’s shoulders and pecs. He was trying to touch everything at once. “I…” He squirmed on his father’s soft cock, maybe sore and sticky by now. “I love you.”</p><p>“I know.” Bruce waited.</p><p>“I am happy.” Dick smiled. It was the one that Bruce was sure only he saw. Small, vulnerable, real. “I’m just… overwhelmed. I didn’t expect any of this.”</p><p>“Neither did I. But I want it to keep happening.” Forever. Batman and Robin, Bruce and Dick, and no one in between. “Do you want to marry me?”</p><p>Dick kissed him sweetly, with a flash of tongue and his lips still curled into that smile. “Ask me again tomorrow.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Me? Write a continuation to one of my fics within six months? Wild. I know some of you would like to see the other Robins &amp; co. react to Bruce and Dick's relationship. Lemme know if there's anything else y'all would like to see in the future, since I apparently cannot leave this idea alone. </p><p>I swear at some point I'll be nice to Dick, I swear it.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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